Thursday, December 1, 2011

These are a couple of the quilts I made for our Quilts for Kids several years ago. I had collected several wonderful cotton prints from Africa over a few years from a seller at the shows in Paducah and in Houston. I don't remember now where the design came from--I probably saw it somewhere and figured out how to do it. If I remember correctly, I started by choosing 4 fabrics for the quilt tops, one light, one medium, and one dark for the 3 sewn together, and a contrast fabric for the top-bottom strips. I cut 2.5" strips, sewed them together with scant 1/4" seams, then pressed them and cut them into 6.5" squares. Then I divided them in half, and sewed them to the contrast strips, half one side up, half the other, to get the staggered effect. After cutting the contrast strip, I had blocks that were 6.5" X 8.5". Then it's just a matter of sewing them together in the right order, and joining the strips of blocks. When that was done, it was time to audition more African fabrics for the borders and backs of the little quilts. I think they came out very nicely. Hmmm, I still have lots more African fabrics--maybe when I get over this knee thing, I could do a few more....